Holy Drokk! Yes, I know it has only just started running in the Galaxy’s Greatest Comic in the last couple of week’s (I remember blogging about the first part in a very excited mood) but those nice folks at Rebellion just sent me details for their publications for March 2007. And let me tell you that we have more than Mad Hares to look forward to this March. The collected edition of the epic new Dredd tale Origins, which re-unites the great John Wagner and the equally great Carlos Ezquerra (Dredd’s co-creators of course), is scheduled for this spring. I’m getting so grud-damned excited I can barely sit on my Lawmaster. Seriously. My fanboy levels are way over their healthy limit right now and I don’t care. I’ve been reading Dredd for three decades now and this story has me damned excited.
We have had hints over the years to the history of Dredd and the Mega Cities, most notably in the very early epic The Cursed Earth (which is collected in the Complete Judge Dredd Case Files Volume 2), where Dredd came across Robert L Booth, the last president of the United States, who was sentenced to one hundred years in suspended animation for his part in initiating the Great Atom Wars which devastated most of the world, leaving only the mega-cities as the last surviving civilisation with vast, irradiated deserts full of dangerous mutants between the cities. But exactly how the Judge system came into being, replacing previous democratic systems hasn’t really been gone into in any great depth – until now.
As those who have read the first couple of parts in the weekly 2000AD will know by now (part three this week), a Cursed Earth group claims to have the body of Chief Judge Fargo, the ‘father of Justice’, first ever Chief Judge of Mega City One and also the clone-father of Dredd himself. DNA tests on the tissue prove it to be Fargo’s and Dredd assembles a small team of Judges to head out into the radiation desert of the Cursed Earth in search of Fargo’s body. His colleagues are a little confused, since Fargo’s body lies in state in MC-1, but we now learn the body on display is not that of the venerated Fargo, who went missing long ago. And there is something else – the tech-Judges think the tissue sample sent with the ransom demand came from a living person… Blimey, nice to see as it approaches its thirtieth year 2000AD still packs in the Thrill Power. You can still check out Rebellion’s trailer for Origins on the 2000AD site.
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September 29th, 2006 at 12:52 pm
[...] Folks, you’ve heard me gushing like the fanboy I am over some of the classic 2000AD material we have coming up for you as well as reminiscing about the comic back in British Comics Month and blogging on the new Dredd: Origins story arc. I can’t help it, I grew up with 2000AD, being right there at the first issue (or ‘prog’) back in the 70s and I’m sure plenty of you know just where I am coming from on that score because so did you. Well, today it is a real pleasure and privilege to be talking to a man who has been incredibly productive in British comics for a long time and is all but synonymous with 2000AD, not to mention one of the fathers of Dredd himself, the great John Wagner. As John and Carlos Ezquerra take readers on the new Dredd epic Origins (just started in Prog 1505), finally exploring the history of the character and his world, it seemed like a good time to ask John a few questions about Britain’s biggest comics character and just why he has been drawn back to writing him time and again over the last three decades: [...]